Denise Frei looks toward the gallery during her sentencing at the Iowa County Courthouse on Monday, Sept. 19, 2011, in Marengo, Iowa. (SourceMedia Group News/Jim Slosiarek)
MARENGO — Alex Bailey looked straight at the woman he once trusted as a second mother, the woman who killed his father.
“You took my dad from me,” the 16-year-old told Denise Frei. “He will never see me grow up. He will never see my graduation. He will never meet his grandchildren.”
Frei, 46, of Marengo, was sentenced Monday to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of her boyfriend Curtis Bailey on July 19, 2009. She was convicted Aug. 25 after a weeklong jury trial in Davenport.
Frei beat Bailey, 33, of Marengo, to death with a rock and other objects in his home. She claimed she’d been verbally, physically and sexually abused by Bailey for six years and that she had to kill him to save the life of her son, Jacob Hilgendorf.
Frei, aided by Hilgendorf and his friend Jessica Dayton, both 21, planned to get Bailey drunk and then suffocate him with plastic wrap. But the plan changed when Bailey awoke and a struggle ensued. The three then used a rock, a candy dish and an ashtray to beat him until he was dead.
Hilgendorf and Dayton both were earlier convicted of first-degree murder and are serving life sentences.
Frei told Judge Denver Dillard on Monday that she hoped her conviction would bring about more education about domestic violence.
“Don’t think you can fix the abuser all by yourself, because it’s not possible,” Frei said in a short statement.
But Frei had other options than killing her partner, Dillard said.
“You had alternatives,” Dillard said. “The evidence also shows that if you had exercised those options, it would have reduced your financial outcome. What you did was for financial profit in addition to any other claim that you make.”
Michelle Geary, Alex Bailey’s mother, described telling her son his father was dead.
“The woman he trusted and loved like a second mother had planned and murdered his dad,” Geary said, wiping tears away during her impact statement. “Denise, I will never forgive you for what you have done to my family and Curt’s family.”
Dillard ordered Frei to pay $150,000 to Bailey’s estate and $7,932 to the Crime Victims’ Assistance Program.
